Tips for beginners?

[yingguoguy]

If you come to China to teach and not to study Chinese, learning the language from scratch over here is not that easy, and nor is it made that easy...I found as an ESL teacher over here that the school wanted to shut us all in a special FT house with the other FTs, and prevent us from getting immersed in the culture or learning the language, which was very frustrating.

I'm in the same boat, having started to teach in a college a few months ago, and agree with the point being made. The schools tend to be very over-protective of their foreign teachers, and I've found there attitude is to 'protect' you from, rather than intergrate you with the community, and, besides, teaching you Chinese is not their responsibility. I'm guessing that most English teachers don't stay long enough to be considered worth investing in. Also while on campus it is only fair that you speak as much English as possible with the students, who have very little opportunity to practice with a native speaker.

I remember reading a study somewhere that said that people who spent a year or two studying a language, even if only at evening classes, did much better at learning the language when they arrived in the country than those who started from scratch when their plane landed at the airport. The reason being that when they arrived they were able to have basic conversations with people from day one and so people got used to talking to them in the L2. With people who knew nothing of the language, all their new friendships and work relationships were based on speaking English (or the L1), and they tended to find it very hard to break out of this. I don't think being immersed in the language is necessarily a huge advantage for the first couple of months of learning, when your coping with basic grammar and vocabulary problems, the quality of the teaching is all important here. Once you've reached a certain level though, immersion is going to make things go much fast.

When I came here I knew a fair number of characters, but in the first month I learned so many more by seeing them daily on shop signs, and having some kind of context. On the other hand my speaking was very poor, and I got into the habit of not speaking to the other teachers in Chinese. I've just come back from travelling during the vacation where I had the opportunity to speak Chinese far more, and have been surprising the teachers by greeting them and asking them if they had a good holiday in almost comprehensible Chinese.

[Aristotle]

Well, it's been a while since I last posted here, and since then, I've tried Pimsleur, the Rosetta Stone and Tell Me More. To any other prospective beginners out there, I must say I find Pimsleur most useful. The 30-minute audio is short enough to make sure you work on the language every day (and since you don't have much to do whilst listening, you end up doing the dishes and cleaning. Bonus! My apartment is much cleaner now.). Although I agree it's very single-minded, it does repeat enough so you remember the words and they make you use them in new ways all the time, which sort of makes the grammar sneak up on you. It might not work for advanced knowledge, but to get to that basic level of understanding, I think it's great. Though obviously it doesn't teach you characters, but that is just a matter of what the Swedish teachers call "sausage-stuffing" once you know words and grammar.

When it comes to the Rosetta Stone, the reason I haven't used it much is because it doesn't really feel like I'm making much progress. I probably do, but most of the time, I listen to the audio and hear a single word, and don't pick up the rest. Then I manage to identify which picture it is.

As for Tell Me More, I mainly use it for pronounciation practice. But the speech recognition seems a bit flawed on certain things, especially when it comes to recognising c, s, z, j, x and q. In the conversation practice, it sometimes approves my pronounciation, but thinks I said a different word than the one I was trying for! Very annoying.

Anyway, that was just my impressions of the three programs. I'd recommend Pimsleur, if nothing else, because it's the easiest one to stick to. After finishing the program, you should have a good base (I suspect. I'm only at lesson 15 out of 30, on the first of three levels). And as an extra incentive, it might help clean your apartment!

[Ferno]

So, Ferno, do you have any advice as to how to use the Natural Approach in self-learning? Since I read about it, I'm terrified of learning the traditional way, for fear of damaging my possible future fluency!

Yes I am also terrified of learning the traditional way - i would be asking a lot more questions on these boards normally.

So far I'm just listening - listening the radio, finished watching a drama series, and listening to Chinese pod.

The Thai's school approach apparently does work, that can't be disputed. They already had a standard traditional teaching base to revert to if the natural approach didn't work.

Referring to your last post: I've gone through Pimsleur and of course this is before I heard about ADL - I spoke everything aloud just as I was told, probably severely affecting my pronounciation. If I could go back in time, I would probably just passively listen without repeating out loud, to get the natural approach effect.

As per Rosetta Stone, well, I had heard good things about it even though it seemed confusing to me. But it looks like it's the closest thing to the Natural Approach for Mandarin that we have - associate sound with images, listen, and learn subconciously. That's their tagline too - to recreate the immersion/child's learning process. I'll probably give it another shot - especially since I have a much larger base now, assuming that's the right mentality .

[leosmith]

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My main tip for someone wanting to learn Chinese though would be to go and study it in the west for a few months before coming! I think western learning techniques are better than chinese ones, and you'll find it very useful - the people I've met with the best chinese ability, barring one, all studied in the west first.

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I'm amazed how simple minded this statement is, especially when it came out of someone supposed to be a language teacher!

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I haven't started learning Chinese yet, but if it's comparable to the situation in Japan, I totally agree with the first statement. People from your native toungue and culture will know more about how you learn. So if you're a westerner, find out what the western techniques are first. That being said, obviously total immersion at some point is optimal. When that is, I haven't a clue.

[Aristotle]

However, if you believe the natural approach people, studying it in your home country might instead give you less-than-perfect pronounciation.

Anyway, Ferno, I actually took your advice and tried the Rosetta Stne again, and it did grow on me. I get the concept now. It was a bit off-putting and weird at first, but I think it might actually work. My only concern is learning conversation. How can I learn to say "Hello, how are you today?" by picture association? Maybe the program will surprise me again. At any rate, I'm learning a lot of vocab and some grammar (mainly measure words). I think I'll give it a fair chance. If my suspicions are correct, I'll come out knowing how to say "The black car is positioned inbetween the short-haired boy with the orange T-shirt and the blue street sign with the grafitti on it," but be unable to invite a person to my house or compliment the chef at a restaurant. But any learning is good learning, and Pimsleur will still be there when I return. And this way, I'll get more listening in early, which can't be a bad thing.

[Ferno]

However' date=' if you believe the natural approach people, studying it in your home country might instead give you less-than-perfect pronounciation.

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It shouldn't matter as long as you are listening to native speakers... with the ALG Thai program the students weren't supposed to go and try out their Thai with people on the street, the key is not to speak at all until enough of a listening base has been established.

as per Rosetta Stone, yeah it seems to be a vocabulary builder - which is a good thing. Even if you know grammar and word order and phrases and stuff, you won't be able to understand things unless you have the actual vocab, the "meat and potatoes" i mean, look at the amount of pure content you had in your example sentance... although the little details like "in between" can be hard to catch..

[Aristotle]

It shouldn't matter as long as you are listening to native speakers

True. Maybe that's just my experience with foreign languages, but I've studied two, and had at least four teachers, neither of them a native speaker.

And yeah, the Rosetta Stone does give vocab, and you have to learn it at some point -- I guess sooner is as good as later.

[leosmith]

It shouldn't matter as long as you are listening to native speakers... with the ALG Thai program the students weren't supposed to go and try out their Thai with people on the street, the key is not to speak at all until enough of a listening base has been established.

Hi Ferno, I couldn't find the string that had info on this ALG Thai program. Can you point it out? Thanks.

Also, I originally planned on starting out by working on tones and pinyin, while simultaneously taking pimsleur (on my own, not in China). I was going to finish pimsleur before getting a tutor for conversation. Do you suggest getting one before pimsleur to work specifically on tones, or is my current plan ok?

[Aristotle]

Although the question was directed to Ferno, I'm going to go ahead and give my view on the answer, because I'm such a meddler. I've read some about the ALG approach. If you want info about it, I think one of the thread is called "learning system of polyglots" or similar. Search for "polyglot" and you should find it. There's also a webpage with lots of info at http://www.algworld.com .

The ALG approach is very difficult to follow if you don't have a school that practices it (and just about no schools seem to do that). From the ALG perspective, conversation with a tutor and Pimsleur tapes are both flawed learning tools, because you'll speak before having enough listening hours (around 800 or more, as I recall). Children don't speak until they've listened for years, and neither should adults. If you speak before your brain has taken in the language completely, you'll end up using some of the "software" of your mother tongue, thus corrupting the speech, resulting in an accent. And once you've begun speaking with an accent, it's very hard, not to say impossible, to get rid of it, as people moving to a new country can after living there for forty years still have a thick accent.

The way I see the ALG approach, it's probably brutally effective when it comes to quality, but quite slow if it's a very foreign language (though they claim to be able to teach French to fluency for English speakers in a single summer!) and very difficult to do by yourself. The closest you'll get to it is probably the Rosetta Stone program. So if you want good pronounciation and don't mind if it'll take some time, I'd recommend (based on my interpretation of ALG) first using the Rosetta Stone, then get a tutor who's very strict and refuses to let you get away with anything but perfection, concentrating on pronounciation rather than vocab and grammar (though you'll probably have a lot of vocan from the Rosetta Stone), and finally use Pimsleur to get some grammar. It'll take some time, but you'll probably get good pronounciation. To be on the safe side, you might want to use your spare time to consume massive amounts of Chinese movies, preferrably ones with much conversation (though kung-fu-flicks are of course much more fun).

Well, that's my two cents. Read up on the website, and listen to Ferno rather than me, since he knows more about it. I just like looking important by writing a lot of text.

[Kong-Rongyou]

Actually I want to buy a software translator for my PC that can convert english words into mandarin or anything that is absolutely related to Chinese writing. Apparently like you I'm also a beginner when it comes to speaking Mandarin before I used to listen to my grandmother who speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin and also Hookien/Fookien she taught me how to speak Cantonese before which I enjoyed speaking but now for almost 14 years I forgotten about Cantonese when my Grandmother died 14 years ago so I started to teach myself how to speak mandarin for the past 2 years and by also watching tv in Global Destiny Cable with their weekly episode entitled Mandarin Basics for 1 hr. I learned the pitch and the 4 tones in pronouncing the Chinese Words.

[leosmith]

Hi Aristotle,

Thanks for the reply - excellent letter, btw. I'm going to check out the website thoroughly. I'm always interested in different learning techniques - especially radically different ones. Anybody reading this, feel free to email me if you come across any others you'd like to share - I'd really enjoy it. While this technique is not for me, I'll probably learn some good stuff in the process.

Cheers,

Leo

[Ferno]

Also, I originally planned on starting out by working on tones and pinyin, while simultaneously taking pimsleur (on my own, not in China). I was going to finish pimsleur before getting a tutor for conversation. Do you suggest getting one before pimsleur to work specifically on tones, or is my current plan ok?

i don't want to mess up your learning process, whatever works for you is fine :o

pinyin isn't really hard

as per tones, well of course the traditional approach would be to practice and learn them. But ask a native mandarin speaker the tone of a word and he'll have to sound it out for himself to tell you - and the only reason he has any answer at all is because he or she studied Mandarin formally in school - a Western learner of Chinese could probably give you the tone faster because they drilled it (which is bad). And ask a Chinese person about the tones of their native non-Mandarin dialect and they'll have no idea.

i think that's the objective of the natural approach - have things internalized in your head from all the listening, so when you recall the sound you recall it correctly. Thai also has 5 tones but I don't think the students in the ADL program never had them explicitly explained.

Again, the natural approach (assuming this is what you want info on) apparently requires that you not speak for an extended period of time because it will permanently damage your pronounciation. So a "tutor for conversation" would have to be the only one speaking in Chinese and I doubt they would understand such an unorthodox approach. It'll be probably hard enough to stop them from trying to work in written characters

and that means no speaking out loud with Pimsleur either

[Ferno]

The way I see the ALG approach, it's probably brutally effective when it comes to quality, but quite slow if it's a very foreign language

then again, if you learn things the regular way, you won't even be fluent after 10 years

[leosmith]

then again, if you learn things the regular way, you won't even be fluent after 10 years

Do you really believe that? Maybe your definition of fluency is different from mine. I went through that website last night. They are pretty convinced that thier way is the only possible way to learn foreign languages, and that all other methods are wastes of time. Interesting marketing, but definitely not for me. But, I did get some really cool insight into certain aspects of language learning, so thanks for that.

[Aristotle]

I believe it, depending on what you mean by fluency.

If you mean to be able to have a conversation at the same level as a native speaker, you can achieve fluency with any method. If you mean being able to pass for a native, I think the ALG might be the only safe way to go. For example, I studied English continuously from 4th up to 11th grade in school, it's considered one of the three "core subjects", along with mathematics and Swedish, I grew up watching American movies, I continuously read English books, I've lived in Chicago and I've had an English girlfriend. Hell, I often find myself thinking in English in my normal Swedish life. I believe I master the language up to the level of a native speaker, but I don't think I could pass for one easily. Not now, not ever. My salvation was probably the masses of American movies I consumed, which has given me a near-native American accent (to the dismay of my British-loving teachers), but you can still trace the Swedish.

It's more or less a linguistical fact, as I understand, that an accent, once set in adult age, is there to stay. That goes for dialects as well. Though I guess you can do specific dialect training, the way actors do, to get the accent off, but then you might as well get it right from the beginning, no?

[Aristotle]

Ha, and now, after reading through the "most embarrassing moments in learning Chinese" thread, I'm more convinced than ever that a good pronounciation is a good thing to have. There seems to be far too many names for the reproductive organs in Chinese, and I don't want to take chances.

[Ferno]

haha, yeah your pronounciation has to be really on

and then there's all these stories about Chinese not being able to understand what you are saying because their brain is tripping over the paradox of a white face speaking chinese

[Aristotle]

Yeah, I know that phenomenon. I've been around Americans studying Swedish for a while, and if you don't know they're going to say something in Swedish, it's absolutely unintelligible. If your mind is trying to interpret the Swedish sounds as English words, it won't know what the hell is going on. Of course, those Americans all had terrible accents, as Americans usually have in all languages.

[RobAnt]

Hi, I'm learning using the Pimsleur approach, but this thread is sparking a question within me:

Just how important is perfect pronunciation?

Surely, the most important thing is to be able to converse and effectively communicate.

I've never been put off by someone speaking English to me with an accent (haha even American!!).

Okay, spelling and writing might be important if you're looking for a job or working for a business - but I, for one, am not to worried about having an accent.

[skunkpuppy]

Aristotle -

Recognising that your comment about Americans all having bad accents is tongue-in-cheek (and I'm not American), and also recognising this is slightly off-topic, but...

Which first-languages are best suited to speaking Mandarin (only in reference to pronunciation, not grammar, vocabulary, etc)? Those from the Sino-tibetan language family? Chinese dialect speakers (e.g. Cantonese)? Tonal languages (e.g. Thai, Vietnamese)? But from my experience, they do have a lot of trouble speaking Mandarian too.

And more generally, is there a language which is *generally* best suited to being flexible in learning other languages (may not be Chinese). I hypothesize that the more native sounds a language has (e.g. English has something like 3,000 sounds; versus Japanese which I think has less than 200 sounds) the more flexible the speaker will be in learning the "exotic" sounds of a foreign language. This is because the person's language faculties in his brain are trained to process a wider range of sounds (explaining why Japanese have trouble distinguishing European "L" and "R" sounds, because the only equivalent for both those sounds in Japanese is a mix between L and R, and is transliterated in romaji as R.)

For European learners of Chinese, the problem is that even though European languages have many sounds, Mandarin has a number of sounds which don't exist in those languages -- e.g. "q--" "j--" "zh--"-- which all basically translate to "ch--" in European phonology. (Hence Mandarin sounds like "ching chong chang" to many Western ears.)